@sarahsweets, thank you for seeing and contributing some important things too. ShockedAndAwed deserves to have help to step back and consider what is going on psychologically with his wife so he doesn't feel so many pains of rejection. Also, he was a good provider, clearly loved his family and still wants to do the right thing and be the responsible man he's always been. Also, it's so wrong for him to go over and over the past and think of any of that as he failed and that never really had value or wasn't real or a true accomplishment.

Actually, when the nest is empty a mother who's career was all about her children and family goes through a loss and a mourning. There is a sudden lonliness and a genuine loss of self because a good part of her life that she navigated is disappearing. If she is around fifty, she is still several years away from retirement and with that nest empty it's not all that unusual for her to want to fill her life with something else, something to allow her to have a sense of personal value. Wanting something different than being the mom and the wife, something more for herself instead of being "there" for everyone else. It's not so much rejecting or that anything he did was not enough or that he should be going over and over to see where he went wrong. However, his sense of loss is genuine too. The nest is emptying for him too and he wasn't expecting his wife to want to vacate the nest as well.

Maybe the void means he too needs to find something else too. A hobby or something to fill the void that is happening to him as well. Often the rejection has more to do with the emptyness of the nest and all that is no longer there.